"John Varley - Gaea 3 - Demon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

it.

When they in turn defecated, the product was projector-ready footage,
which was why Gaea called them producers.
It was sixty revs after the preliminary scout first discovered the site
and found it good. The flacks and hypes were returning from their forays into
the woods, laden with game. These were ape-like creatures: two of the few
predatory species Gaea had ever produced. Gaea was not good at predators. A
hype would have fared poorly in an African jungle. But in Gaea, most of the
fauna were not good at flight, either, simply because they had no predators.
The principal source of meat, the smilers, did not have to be stalked-they
didn't run-or even killed. Meat could be harvested from them in long strips,
doing no harm to the smiler. Many a smiler steak was sizzling in the
commissary building as the first great feast was prepared and laid out on long
trestle tables with immaculate white cloths and big crystal jugs of chablis. A
breathless quiet fell over the site as all awaited the arrival of Gaea. It was
broken only by the excited meet, meet, meeeet of the bolexes as they jostled
each other for position.
The ground began to tremble. She came through the woods. There was a
reverent gasp from the assembled Priests as her head came into view over the
treetops.
 Gaea was fifteen meters tall. Or, as she preferred to have it, "fifty
foot two, eyes of blue."
They were blue, too, though they couldn't be seen behind the largest
pair of sunglasses ever constructed. Her hair was platinum blonde. She wore
enough heavy canvas, dyed light blue, to rig a Spanish galleon. The cloth was
cut and sewn by tentmakers into a knee-length dress. She wore moccasins the
size of broad-beamed canoes. In face and figure, she bore an uncanny
resemblance to Marilyn Monroe.
She paused when she reached the clearing and looked over all her
subjects and all their works. At last she nodded: it was good. The lights on
the klieg trees turned to face her and the massive lips parted in a smile,
revealing even white teeth big as bathroom tiles. All around her, bolexes and
arriflexes whirred admiration.
A chair had been built for her. It groaned as she settled into it. All
her movements seemed slow. A blink took almost a second. The panaflexes had
learned the trick of undercranking so that she seemed to move at normal speed
while her minions scampered like mice.
Dressers scrambled up ladders behind her, armed with rakes for her hair,
buckets of nail polish, cans of mascara. She ignored them; it was their job to
anticipate her movements-something they were not always able to do. She looked
at the big screen that had been erected facing her chair.
The Pandemonium Traveling Film Festival was about to begin. The klieg
trees dimmed, turned off; the valley darkened. Gaea cleared her throat-a sound
like a diesel engine-but when she spoke, it was pitched in the feminine range.
Very loud, but feminine.
"Roll it," she said.


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